Biographical Data :

Name :

Abul Fazl Allami

Period :

1551 - 1602

Biographical detail :

Sufi historian and biographer of the Mughal emperor Akbar.

Abul Fazl was the favourite wazir of Akbar and under whose influence the latter pursued religious and political policies within his empire. Abul Fazl saw Akbar as the ideal philosopher-king. Akbar was establishing a civilisation, which Allami argued, would help people to cultivate a spirit of such generosity that conflict would become impossible.

It was a polity that expressed the Sufi ideal of sulh-e-kull (universal peace), which was merely a prelude to mahabbat-e-kull (the universal love), which would positively seek the material and spiritual welfare of all human beings. The idea was that bigotry was non-sense and Akbar was above the parochial prejudice of narrow sectarianism. However, Akbar’s idea of such religious pluralism offended some Muslims.

Abul Fazl’s who wrote ‘Aein-i-Akbari’ was influenced by al-Biruni’s book ‘Kitab al-Hind’ which mentions two Sanskrit books, Patanjal and Sakaya that he translated in Arabic – the former deals with after death accounts and the latter with the creation of things and their types. Al-Biruni travelled many places in India for about twenty years and studied Hindu philosophy, mathematics, geography and religion from the Pundits. His book provides a detailed account of Indian life, religions, languages, and cultures and includes many observations on geography.

Abul Fazl also authored Akbar-Nama, Maktubat-I-Allami and Ayar-Danish that was a translation of Pilpay's Fables in Persian.